Page 21 of Black Moon

“Of course, but there are other packs who’ve lost every single omega in the past twenty years.”

“I know,” she said tightly, and there was a bitterness there I was worried was directed at me.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to mansplain this all to you.”

She shook herself out of it, her smile back. “No, no it’s fine. You’re not. There’s just a pack nearby that...seems like maybe they’re in that type of situation. Continue.”

That was worth considering—maybe it wasn’t a locale thing at all, but something the Grove pack did particularly. I was back to my absurd working theory of apples curing all, which was a thing people said, right? But it wasn’t actually possible.

“Truth was, we don’t really know how well werewolves are doing at all—not in a large-scale way. Most packs are pretty secluded, keep to themselves. Only gets worse if alphas feel like they’re vulnerable. I figured you all were like that too, considering Alpha Grove ignored my letters for so long.”

Claudia pursed her lips. Where she might’ve taken offense, she just took another bite of the danish and shrugged. “Okay, sure. We’ve been known to be a little traditionalist in the past.”

“Sure, and nothing wrong with that. But it’s hard to organize a real push to find a cure when nobody’s talking to each other.”

She arched a brow at me. “Your father can’t do anything about that?”

I sighed through my nose. “Well, he could. But rare is the politician who does anything without incentive, or at least without the support of a majority of constituents. He goes through the motions, but you’re right—he’s not doing enough for werewolves. Problem is, he could be a senator from any state in the union, and the majority of voters would still be human, still have fleeting, irregular contact with werewolves. Until we start talking about the Condition publicly, offering solutions, I don’t think anything is going to change.”

Claudia considered me for a few silent seconds, finishing her danish then licking the icing and jam off her fingers. “Okay, I get your point. And the Condition seems to have made most packs more reclusive than they were before, because having all our pack omegas vulnerable scares the shit out of us, so we hide and don’t let outsiders know how much we’re hurting. But how can the Grove pack help with all this, without making ourselves even more vulnerable?”

I set my danish on the coffee table on one of the plates, dirtying it after all, and pulled out a notebook. “Well, it’d help to know what the Grove pack does to support omegas? See if I can find out if there’s anything you all are doing differently than packs elsewhere.”

She stuck out her lips and thought for a second. “I guess there’s Linden Grove? Alpha’s son. I think I saw you two talking the night of Aspen Senior’s wake? Most packs I know don’t have a medically trained doctor available, definitely not a werewolf one. The pack I grew up in had a guy people went to to set broken bones so they healed right, but before the Condition, it was so rare for wolves to get sick at all. There was never any need to send anyone off for all that schooling.”

“That makes sense.” Practically everything I learned pointed to me needing to have more than a passing conversation with Linden Grove. “Anything else you can think of that’s different here from the pack you grew up in?”

She shrugged. “Just the usual. People are nice. Look out for each other. Speaking of, you have any particular impressions of Skip Chadwick?”

The way she said it, with just a hint of bite behind her words, had me slipping my pen into the rings of my notebook and staring at her.

“Honestly?” I asked. “He’s the first person to invite me out here, and I’m grateful for that. But I get the impression he’s not particularly popular with Grove omegas. In my experience, when a bunch of omegas are wary of an alpha, there’s a good reason for that.”

She hummed, sitting back and taking a sip of her coffee. “Maybe.”

Well, that wasn’t the kind of answer that was going to do me any good, but it let me know to be on my guard around the man well enough.

She sighed, putting her mug down on her thigh. “As far as I know—and I like to think I know a lot about these matters in the pack—”

“I don’t doubt you do.”

“It seems to most omegas here that he doesn’t really have our interests at heart. When it comes down to it, we want an alpha who’s going to listen to everyone’s concerns, and look out for every single one of us, not just people like him.”

“You think he’s one of those alphas who thinks omegas are more commodity than person?” I clarified.

Her brows shot up and she shrugged, but that was just the nicest way for her to say, “Absolutely hell yes,” without opening her mouth.

“So”—she shifted in her seat, folding her legs under her—“you tell me what you’ve done in town so far, and I’ll tell you what you’re missing out on.”

I laughed, and an hour later, we had firm plans to go apple picking with a couple of her friends, and she went on about one-dollar movie nights at the old theater downtown.

Honestly, it’d be nice to get out of my cramped motel room.

“Thank you so much for inviting me over. I was beginning to worry everyone here wanted me gone,” I said when she led me to the door.

Warmly, she squeezed my arm and shook her head. “It’s just been hard, with Alpha Grove dying all the sudden. Everybody here’s nice. And I, for one, am thrilled to have you. See you Tuesday?”

“See you Tuesday,” I confirmed, and when I stepped out onto the porch, I saw just the man everyone was pointing me toward, marching up the walkway from the street, a dog barreling right ahead of him.

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